Cost of developing a Mobile App

Factors to consider

Mobile App Development cost

The cost of developing an app will hugely factor into the pricing of your app. You’ll need to take everything into consideration to even come close to a reasonable estimate for the cost of your app.

They include but is not exclusive to:

Type of App you want

Design & prototyping

Complexity of front-end

Complexity of back-end

Number of platforms you want it on

Hourly rates of developer

Quality and speed of development

Amount of customization that goes into the app

Management and Maintenance

Many people often forget about the cost of maintenance when deciding on the cost of developing an app. Maintenance will take up approximately 30% to 40% of the app development cost in its lifecycle. Proper maintenance is crucial to the longevity and overall usability of your app and should not be neglected.

Opportunity cost

The third factor is a more abstract idea. It is usually not considered, but it’s as important as the other two factors. A large and complex mobile app can take up to a year to build and deploy. If it doesn’t deploy in time to meet your company’s needs, then the money invested in the app is wasted.

Expected Return on Investment (ROI)

Some business ideas revolve around having an app. For others, it’s another tool to engage their existing user base. Some require their app to generate revenue directly and immediately, while others expect the app to indirectly increase revenue via consumer engagement. All have vastly different expectations of the ROI.

Make sure you know exactly how you want your new app to generate income and set the correct financial goals.

Total Estimation

A final warning. While choosing the most expensive developer might not guarantee quality, compromising on quality and going for cheap development will almost always incur a larger development cost over time as you work to solve buggy and improper coding.

All factors considered, a large and complex mobile app can cost upwards of SGD $150k, including analytic tools, CRM, customized back-end, design cost and personalized member targeting. These type of Apps however, are designed to take the market by storm or funded by a large corporation. The average cost of most Apps hovers between 40k to $80K SGD, with some advanced features added in.

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Rainmaker Labs is Asia Pacific’s leading mobile consultancy and enterprise mobile app developer. We help transform the business and operations of the world’s leading enterprises with mobile.

Testimonials

Our partnership with Rainmaker Labs spanned a period of 2 and a half years and it was an amazing experience working with a team that fully understood how to bring a mobile first project from ideation to initial deployment to on-going iterations. Andrew has done an amazing job in managing the complexities of a large team of developers & project managers to bring this key project to reality.

Rainmaker Labs has provided exceptional support with regards to mobile app development of our product! We are now in our 6th iteration in 36 months of our partnership and I am still impressed by their professionalism & best in class delivery. Thank you Alex, Andrew, Haw Shyang and Rainmaker Labs team!

I'm still amazed at the quality of work of the Rainmaker Labs team. The interaction was smooth, the work was fast, and the result was very professional. The Rainmaker team's in-depth knowledge of how to bring a mobile first product to market is simply yards beyond other mobile players. Alex, Neo & Andrew..continue with this good work. You guys are really good at what you do.